Sowing Discord (3)
Ahead of the coming clash with Han Yeong's army, Ding Yuan — having struck Lu Bu and her officers from the vanguard — summoned the commanders who fawned on him and the officers he had recently raised up.
"Heh heh! Come in, come in, all of you!!"
Ding Yuan threw his arms wide, welcoming them like a host greeting honored guests.
"Governor! It's been far too long!!"
"Heh heh heh. What a rare honor — the Governor himself, summoning the likes of us?"
Those who filed into the hall spoke in cheap, oily tones, and for men who called themselves officers, no trace of discipline showed in their bearing or their slovenly dress.
The people Ding Yuan had called for were commanders out of the Black Mountain Bandits.
Their chieftain, Zhang Yan, had been pardoned with the court title of General of the Household Who Pacifies Disturbance, but a few of the others seemed addicted to the bandit trade; unable to come to their senses, they had tried to raid Bingzhou territory and been captured by the Bingzhou army.
Seeing that their martial skill was not altogether poor, Ding Yuan had taken them into his service.
As long as Zhang Yang and Song Yi are holding Bingzhou, I'll simply have to put these men to use.
That Zhang Yang was the general — not the Zhang Yang of the Ten Attendants, the eunuch who schemed at his side.
Zhang Yang the officer, long one of his own, was soft-willed and faint-hearted for a son of Bingzhou, but his martial skill was respectable enough that Ding Yuan trusted him considerably — enough to entrust him with Shangdang Commandery, the very heart of the province.
Of course, should that man ever threaten his position, he too would find himself on the list to be purged.
"What is it you've called us here for?"
The ones asking were Sun Qing and Wang Dang, men who had once been chieftains of the Black Mountain Bandits.
Instead of the court's officers, gone soft and slack in the long peace, he would set these ferocious brutes howling at the front.
Even so, he could not bring himself to trust them completely; he planned to pull a few junior officers out of Lu Bu's command and attach them as the bandits' adjutants.
"I intend to wipe out the army come from Liang Province and deal with the whelp who commands it, one Han Yeong. I'd have you take the vanguard for me."
If he cut off the head of the pup who had marched an army in from beyond the provinces, the court ministers would lose all stomach to oppose him.
Wang Yun's face especially was a masterpiece. The man believed in me so firmly — and I betrayed him...
Recalling the look of betrayal that had crumpled Wang Yun's face at the banquet, Ding Yuan curled his lips into a sour smile and sneered at the ministers of the court.
Armchair theorists, every last one of them — incompetent and useless the moment overwhelming power stares them in the face.
The age of chaos had begun long since; subduing men by force was simple common sense.
Those who paid tribute and submitted obediently, as Cao Cao had, pleased him.
Then, just as Ding Yuan finished proclaiming that he would set them at the vanguard and drive back Han Yeong's army, Sun Qing asked:
"What happened to the Flying General you used to keep among your officers, Gover—"
CRASH—!!
"Not one word about that woman."
"F-forgive me, sir!"
At the mere mention of Lu Bu, Ding Yuan's eyes had bulged and his fury boiled over.
He had left her behind at the army camp precisely so that she would earn no distinction, yet the rumors in Luoyang refused to die down — that Ding Yuan was nothing without Lu Bu; that the adopted daughter would soon cast aside the old man and become the new master of their force in his place. Every last one of them grated on his ears.
He had ordered Zhang Yang to hunt down whoever was spreading the tales and drag them in, but not a single culprit had been taken — for Jia Xu, meticulous in all things, had hired a web of agents and laid her maneuvers so that no thread could ever be traced back to its source.
And yet Ding Yuan had begun to lend the rumors of Luoyang some credence, because one of them — that grain was being shipped all the way from Yongzhou to Han Yeong's camps — had just been confirmed as fact by his own intelligence.
If that much was true, then the whispers concerning Lu Bu left ample room for suspicion.
At the news that Lu Bu would not be taking the field this time, even the Bingzhou soldiers under Ding Yuan's command had been seen trembling with unease.
Am I truly so untrustworthy, then — I, Ding Yuan?!
Even base-born ex-bandits eyed his abilities with doubt and asked after Lu Bu first.
It might well be an enemy trap, but the rumors had made Ding Yuan keenly aware of just how far Lu Bu's shadow had weakened his authority in the military world.
At this rate, even that cunning serpent of a eunuch, Zhang Yang, might abandon him and climb aboard Lu Bu's boat instead.
I will take that pup Han Yeong's head by my own strength alone. Even without Lu Bu, I, Ding Jianyang, will teach them — plainly and unmistakably — who the true guardian of Bingzhou is!!
To protect the wealth and power in his grasp, Ding Yuan resolved in his heart to claim Han Yeong's head.
"...Haaah."
A night washed in pale, hazy moonlight.
Lu Bu, her heart in turmoil, stood beyond the stockade of the camp and let out a long sigh, gazing up at the stars strewn across the night sky like scattered grains of salt.
Why in the world won't Father trust me?
When he had first taken her in, Ding Yuan had cherished her as if she were his own flesh and blood; but from the day she came of age and her name began to spread, their relationship had grown strained by slow degrees.
The Black Mountain Bandit affair and the business at Mengjin Port had set them openly at odds, yet Lu Bu had never let go of her respect and affection for her adoptive father.
And now he trusted nothing but gossip drifting in from Luoyang — striking her name from the regiment while raising trash who had lived by banditry up to command troops.
For a woman who had always carried herself as a warrior, the wound to her pride ran deep.
"Sis."
"...Wei Xu?"
Wei Xu, her younger kinsman, came toward her.
"What is it?"
"Someone claiming to be a friend from your hometown has come to see you."
"A friend from home?"
She had hardly known a soul back in her old hometown, and while she was still puzzling over it, an officer with a face as sly as they came approached her.
Who the hell is this? This rat-faced bastard.
"Haha, it has been far too long, General Lu Bu. Do you remember me? I am called Li Su, and—"
As the oily Li Su tried to edge closer, Lu Bu swung the Sky-Piercing Halberd up and set its blade at his throat.
"Stay where you are. Talk from there."
Lu Bu despised nothing so much as people who, with no true bond to her at all, came crawling to get close the moment her name grew famous.
In Bingzhou she had seen plenty of their kind — jackals come sniffing for crumbs of another person's fame.
Li Su swallowed drily and flapped his hands in frantic retreat.
"N-now, just a moment, if you please! I am no suspicious character. I have come only because your plight grieves me, General Lu Bu."
"My plight grieves you?"
"It does. You became the adopted daughter of General Ding Yuan, Governor of Bingzhou, and yet ever since he laid hands on the military authority of Luoyang, you've been left out in the cold, haven't you? That is the pity that brought me here."
Lu Bu was no great thinker, but with the instinct and sharp eye honed through years of command, she read something unsaid behind Li Su's gaze and asked:
"Cut the small talk and get to the point. What is it you want to say?"
"Then first, allow me to offer a token of consolation — please, accept."
Li Su laid out the treasures he had brought, along with a sweat-blood steed of Ferghana stock — no Red Hare, but a genuine famous horse in its own right.
The soldiers standing near Lu Bu felt greed begin to seethe in their chests at the sight.
"General Han Yeong holds in the very highest esteem both your character, General Lu Bu — how you once reined in the Bingzhou troops who were squeezing the people dry — and the valor and martial glory you have spread across the realm. If you were perhaps of a mind to—"
"Piss off."
Lu Bu only scrunched her brow and refused.
Li Su, who had taken it for granted that the offer would be swallowed whole, gaped like a fool and asked again.
"...I beg your pardon?"
"I'm telling you to piss off — I've no intention of taking service anywhere else — before I kill you and take the treasure and the horse for myself-!!"
BOOM!!
Lu Bu drove the Sky-Piercing Halberd straight down into the earth, and with a thunderous roar clods of soil burst into the air.
Hiiiiek!!
At the sight, Li Su went white with terror, snatched up his treasures and his horse, and fled headlong back the way he had come.
"You don't regret it, then? That Li Su fellow is a dubious sort, I'll grant you — but Han Yeong struck me as quite a decent man when I saw him the other day."
Zhang Liao had taken no particularly bad impression of Han Yeong, and so she asked; Lu Bu answered with firm resolve.
"Life is more than treasure. Blind myself over a pile of riches, and betray the father who raised me for ten years — a man I don't even share blood with?"
She spoke the words without a flicker of self-consciousness — words so outlandish that the Lu Bu of the original history would have exploded into derisive laughter to hear them. For her, betraying the father who raised her was an unforgivable sin against family.
Besides, she had grown up under Ding Yuan for ten years. However virtuous and accommodating a warlord might be, how could she place herself beneath someone she had known for barely a single day?
Even with suspicions of secret dealings with Han Yeong hanging over her — even scorned and shoved aside for it — she could not betray her adoptive father.
Days after Lu Bu cut Li Su's offer off cold, Ding Yuan marched out with his freshly reorganized army toward the vicinity of Hongnong Commandery, where Han Yeong had made his camp.
"...Is that so?"
Hearing that Li Su — who had stepped forward so confidently, promising to reel Lu Bu in — had failed, I was not particularly surprised.
No Red Hare to sweeten the offer, and this Lu Bu's nature looked nothing like the one from the original history anyway.
I had loosely kept the possibility of failure in mind from the start.
Then word came that Ding Yuan was marching out, and a scout who had been shadowing his movements sprinted into Han Yeong's tent.
"Ding Yuan's host of fifty thousand is advancing on our position!!"
"And the vanguard?"
"Commanders by the names of Sun Qing and Wang Dang, sir."
Hearing the report, I murmured under my breath.
"...Not Lu Bu."
The strategy of the Bingzhou army, famed across the land for its elite soldiers, was simple enough to be known even in the Central Plains: put Lu Bu and Bingzhou's picked troops at the front and crush everything under sheer overwhelming force.
"So the inducement failed — but the sowing of discord took root after all?"
"We hadn't even begun driving the wedge properly... It seems that unlike Lu Bu, Ding Yuan puts remarkably little trust in his adopted daughter."
Even with the discord taking, Jia Xu looked strangely unimpressed, as if the whole thing had come too cheaply.
According to her, the rumor that Lu Bu meant to shove Ding Yuan aside had been merely the opening move of the stratagem — the stage, she called it, at which each side is given grounds to doubt the other.
Just as she had once split Ma Chao and Han Sui apart in the original history, Jia Xu had planned to peel Lu Bu and Ding Yuan away from each other slowly, layer by layer.
But Ding Yuan had outrun her expectations, casting Lu Bu from the vanguard on the strength of a single floating rumor out of Luoyang.
The Lu Bu I met didn't strike me as so utterly beyond trust...
I had grown up since childhood in Liang Province, a land crawling with criminals, and I could read a fair measure of a person's nature in their eyes.
I had seen her only once, granted — but hers were not the eyes of something wallowing in greed, the way the great betrayer of Romance of the Three Kingdoms was painted.
This Lu Bu is more the proud soldier type? Her temper does look a touch wild, but...
At the very least, she did not seem to be the kind of great one I'd grown up watching — eyes blinded by power and riches. If anyone fit that breed, it was Ding Yuan.
"So what do we do now? They say the vanguard isn't Lu Bu."
When I asked, Jia Xu answered without a hitch.
"With Lu Bu absent, our enemy has only become easier to handle. We should shape our strategy around that fact."
Jia Xu counseled that with Lu Bu out of the picture, we had to shave the enemy's numbers down as far as they would go.
For the record, this was the first council of war in which Jia Xu formally took charge of our strategy.
Planning had always been Fa Zheng's domain, but she was absent now, and so Jia Xu — newly and formally entered into our military circle — had put forward the sowing-discord scheme and the rest of her stratagems.
By now Fa Zheng was probably off with the Ma siblings, overseeing the repair of Chang'an while keeping an eye on Dong Zhuo's army.
"So how are we fighting this one?"
"Well, first of all..."
Jia Xu turned it over in her mind, and then a serene smile settled on her face.
"Shall we lose a few times — just enough to let Ding Yuan's army, trembling without Lu Bu, swell up nice and confident?"
"...Huh?"
At Jia Xu's proposal that they lose to Ding Yuan on purpose, the other commanders voiced their doubts.
"And while we're at it — it's winter, and the cold is bitter, so I thought we might do the enemy the courtesy of warming their bodies as well."
And with those words, Jia Xu began to lay out the stratagems she had prepared, one by one.